In a rare and extended public tribute to the men and women of the US. intelligence community, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine used a White House press briefing on Operation Epic Fury to publicly acknowledge the foundational role that intelligence collection and analysis has played in enabling the ongoing military campaign against Iran — and to affirm, in explicit and unambiguous terms, the depth and comprehensiveness of American knowledge about the Iranian regime.
General Caine departed from the operational portion of his briefing to recognize what he described as the essential role of the U.S. intelligence enterprise — a network of uniformed and civilian professionals whose work, largely invisible to the public, underpins every military action taken in the campaign.
“Thanks to our intelligence force, we know Iran,” Caine stated. “Their leaders, their weapons, their industrial and economic systems, their leaders’ pattern of life — where they go, what they think, and what they do. We know everything.”
Caine described the breadth of the intelligence architecture supporting current operations, citing contributions from the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, and — in the context of the maritime interdiction operations he had just described — the Office of Naval Intelligence.
“Normally located behind the green door, behind the vault door, in dark windowless rooms across the world — 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year — our world-class intelligence members have worked tirelessly,” Caine said, noting that the intelligence supporting the current campaign represents the culmination of “days, months, and in many cases years of work.”
He described the full intelligence cycle as it applies to operations: from the identification of an intelligence requirement, to field collection by uniformed and interagency case officers, through rigorous analysis, to final reporting that informs targeting and decision-making. “Those team members spend their careers answering the incredibly important questions that we must attempt to answer before, during, and after operations,” he said.
Caine stated unequivocally that none of the maritime interdiction operations carried out under his command — including the seizure of multiple vessels and the disabling of the Tusca — could have been executed without the intelligence foundation those professionals have built. “The sun never sets on them,” he said……See More
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